“To come that close, it’s a little bit crushing,” he said moments after learning his best toss, though a Canadian record, wasn’t podium-worthy. “I really wanted it bad.”

For all the heroics and patriotic chest thumping inherent in the Games, it can also be the site of devastating disappointments. Perhaps no more than for those athletes who come within a hairbreadth of having a medal draped around their necks. It’s not always easy moving forth from fourth.

“Fourth felt like last place to me,” recalls swimmer Marianne Limpert, even 12 years removed from touching the wall a scant 12-hundredths of a second behind the third place finisher in 200-metre individual medley at Sydney in 2000.

While a distance less than the width of a fingernail cost Armstrong, and Canadians, the chance to watch the red maple leaf hoisted for the first time after an Olympic throwing event, the big lug has never lacked perspective. He understood, as a 27-year-old at Beijing, he was just moving into his prime in his specialty.

“It doesn’t gnaw at me,” Armstrong, now 31, said in a recent interview. “A lot of people would think that it does but that’s the way she goes. I had no control over how I finished. More than anything it’s a motivator going into the London Olympics. I just looked at it as a positive.”

While some, like Armstrong, used the achievement as a building block for another four years of training, others will instantly know their shot at bringing home an Olympic bauble is likely gone for good.

As the national record holder in the 200-metre breaststroke, Mike Brown was one of the favourites to capture a medal in his signature event in the pool at Beijing. But after he touched the wall, he said he was “in shock” when he looked at the clock and saw he’d missed a medal by .09 seconds.

“It was tough knowing you were that close to reaching one of your goals that you’ve had pretty much your whole life,” says Brown now. “Losing like I did in my race was excruciatingly tough but time heals all wounds.”

But it does indeed take time. Brown said there was a period after the race when he would be preoccupied, replaying his fourth-place swim in his head.

“It would be going through my mind constantly,” he says, recalling the questions that roiled within. “What if I’d taken a quicker stroke here? Or did a turn faster or had a faster reaction off the start? But you can’t relive those things forever … there’s no point dwelling on.”

Now, as a 27-year-old, Brown hopes to enter law school after his finishes a few more courses at the University of Calgary.

“I had a great career but I still would’ve loved that medal,” he says. “I’m not going to say I’m OK with being fourth but I’ve come to terms with it and realize it’s still a great accomplishment. There’s not a lot of people who can say they’re fourth in the world at something.”

All these years later, it still troubles Limpert that a return visit to an Olympic podium slipped away. She’d won a silver medal in the same event four years earlier at Atlanta but that’s little consolation when relegated to the category of also swam.

“I focus more on missing the second medal as opposed to being fourth best in the world,” said the 39-year-old who works as a co-ordinator of products and services for New Brunswick Power.

“Maybe later on but definitely at that time and obviously for months afterward, not really,” she said. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m very proud of my medal and I’m so happy I did win that four years earlier but there in Sydney, I was looking to be on the podium again.”

Runner Gary Reed stepped away from Olympic competition after he came in fourth in Beijing in the 800 metres. That was his shot at glory.

Reed said that while an athlete like Armstrong, who he calls his “best friend,” is in his prime as a thrower, he said he realized, at 26 in China, he’d peaked in his discipline and there was no point in trying to hang on until London in 2012.

Reed says that “not even for a slight second” has he ever felt any disappointment about his Olympic performance in 2008, the same can’t be said of all his friends and family.

“Do you know how many people I’ve had in my life who say, ‘Oh, fourth place, you’re probably so bummed out.’ I always kind of laugh. If as bad as my life gets is to come fourth at the Olympics, I’ll take it,” says the 30-year-old who is now selling real estate in Vancouver

“Of course, you run the race over a million times in you head and think, what if, what if, what if … but I was always a guy who put everything on the track. I felt like every time I raced, I gave everything I had. So I look back on Beijing and there are no regrets, no regrets at all.”

While Brown also says he now has his fourth-place finish in perspective, he concedes that a sense of “unfinished business” caused him to end an 18-month retirement and return to the pool with hopes of qualifying for London in the event he’d long dominated nationally.

But Brown didn’t move on to his third Games. In the final of the Olympic trials, he finished fourth.

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